My Darling Clementine

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This article is about the John Ford Western. For the song see Oh My Darling, Clementine.


My Darling Clementine

Movie poster of 1946's My Darling Clementine.
Directed by John Ford
Produced by Samuel G. Engel
Written by Stuart N. Lake (book)
Sam Hellman (screen story)
Samuel G. Engel (screenplay)
Winston Miller (screenplay)
Starring Henry Fonda
Linda Darnell
Victor Mature
Cathy Downs
Grant Withers
Walter Brennan
Tim Holt
Ward Bond
Music by Cyril Mockridge
David Buttolph (uncredited)
Cinematography Joseph MacDonald
Editing by Dorothy Spencer
Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s) December 3 1946 (U.S. release)
Running time 97 min.
Language English
IMDb profile

My Darling Clementine is a 1946 western film, directed by John Ford, based on the story of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral between the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang. It stars Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, Grant Withers as Ike Clanton and Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton, with Linda Darnell, Cathy Downs, Tim Holt, Ward Bond, Alan Mowbray, John Ireland, Roy Roberts, Jane Darwell and Chief Tahachee.

The movie was adapted by Samuel G. Engel, Sam Hellman, and Winston Miller from the book Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake. The title derives from the folk song "Oh My Darling, Clementine", which is sung in the movie.

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Sam Peckinpah cited this, along with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, as his favorite film of all time.

Clips from the movie were prominently featured in the M*A*S*H fifth-season episode "Movie Tonight".

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In 1882, the Earp brothers Wyatt, James, Morgan and Virgil are driving cattle to California when they cross the Clanton family led by the "Old Man". Told of a nearby town, Tombstone, the older brothers ride in, leaving the youngest brother James to watch over the cattle. The Earps quickly find Tombstone a lawless town. When they return to their camp, they find the cattle rustled and James dead. Seeking vengeance, Wyatt returns to Tombstone and takes the open job of town marshall, meeting with the local powers, Doc Holliday and the Clantons, again and again in order to find out who was responsible. In the meantime, a young woman from Boston named Clementine arrives in town...

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

John Ford developed the concept for My Darling Clementine from his association with Wyatt Earp in the Hollywood of the 1920s. While the film does not represent itself as history, and in fact may be classed as an historical romance, viewers have noted the following discrepancies from the known facts:

  • The ages of the Earp brothers are wrong. In the movie, James is a teenager, Virgil is in his twenties, Wyatt is thirty, and Morgan is the oldest. In actuality, at the time of the OK Corral gunfight, James was 40, Virgil was 38, Wyatt was 33, and Morgan was 30. There was a younger brother Warren in real life who does not appear in the movie.
  • Wyatt is depicted as being the town marshal of Tombstone, and Virgil and Morgan as his deputies. In fact, Virgil was the town marshal (according to some sources, his actual title was "chief of police"), and Morgan and Wyatt were his deputies.
  • James and Virgil are depicted as getting killed: James during the cattle rustling scene, and Virgil shot in the back before the gunfight takes place. James actually lived until 1926 and Virgil survived the gunfight (only to be wounded during an attempted assassination as retaliation). The only Earp to be killed in Tombstone was Morgan, and that was months after the gunfight.
  • Doc Holliday is depicted as having gotten his degree in medicine. In fact, Holliday was a dentist, not a physician or surgeon.
  • Doc Holliday is shown critically wounded and dying by the end of the gunfight. He survived in real life with a minor bruise and lived for years afterward, dying in Colorado in 1887 from tuberculosis.
  • "Old Man" Clanton is shown as a major participant in the feud between the Clantons and the Earps and takes part in the gunfight. (This is also true of the later film Gunfight at the OK Corral.) In fact he was killed in August 1881, well before the gunfight took place.
  • Billy Clanton is shown getting killed well before the gunfight, where he actually died. Ike Clanton and other Clanton brothers are seen getting killed at the gunfight, but this did not happen.
  • The movie depicts Wyatt and Doc meeting for the first time in Tombstone. They had in reality met years earlier at Fort Griffin, Texas and were good friends by the time both arrived at Tombstone.
  • In the movie, the Earps are portrayed as cattlemen who casually stop in Tombstone for a drink and a shave only to get caught up in a rivalry with the Clantons. In truth, they had planned to move to Tombstone to start businesses and get in on the gambling and mining claims that were thriving there.
  • The gunfight is portrayed as an epic, street-wide running battle lasting minutes. In fact the fight lasted no longer than 30 seconds.
  • Rather than being a bachelor falling in love with a visiting teacher, Wyatt had arrived to Tombstone with a wife (as did his brothers) and during his stay there had fallen in love with actress Josephine Marcus.
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

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